“Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste”: How Consulting Firms Are Using COVID-19 as a Pretext to Transform Universities and Business School Education
本文批判性分析了大型管理咨询公司在疫情期间发布的报告，指出其利用危机推动大学向数字平台转型，本质是极端新自由主义，并探讨了商学院如何抵制这种趋势。
During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, major management consulting firms published numerous reports calling for “revolutionary” change in universities, including business schools. Leaders should use the crisis as an opportunity to transform their institutions into digital platform businesses, resembling Spotify or YouTube. By critically analyzing these reports this essay seeks to make three contributions. First, at the university level, I conceptualize these recommendations as an expression of extreme neoliberalism, consisting of “crisis opportunism” and “libertarian utopianism.” Second, moving to the business school level, I argue that the influence of management consultants provokes a professional paradox, especially among management educators. This has significant implications for the legitimacy of business school academics. And thirdly, I propose that the business school community is uniquely positioned (vis à vis other schools in the university) to challenge extreme neoliberalism. Three avenues of resistance are posited, focusing not only on consulting firms but their clients too - senior university executives.